“Syme was not only dead, he was abolished, an unperson.”

Is the country “ungovernable?”

I’ve been thinking about the increasing likelihood that Democrats will lose the Tuesday election for the Senate in Massachusetts, and in doing so will lose their 60th Senate vote. And it’s simply impossible for me to imagine that Obama will be able to pass anything – health care, global warming, financial regulation, you name it – legislation for the rest of his presidency. This isn’t just hyperbole or panic coming from someone who leans left. But if the GOP plan really is to oppose anything and everything Obama simply because it’s the only coherent and consistent principle they have – and it is – then he really is completely fucked.

The first thing that will go, of course, is health care. It’s toast (as I’ve always predicted since the summer, though perhaps not for this reason. But as they say in Jurassic Park, Nature always finds a way, and so do powerful entrenched special interests and the status quo).

But it’s especially disappointing because Obama was never given the chance to govern. It might feel like he was elected a long time ago, but when you consider Al Franken not being seated until July due to GOP obstructionism (again, their only plan) along with a few odd circumstances like Ted Kennedy’s death, Obama has only actually had a Congressional supermajority for a few months. And in that time, we will get… nothing.

The Senate is broken, and as long as it is, so is America. Years from now (or even right now), historians might look back at the very recent expansion of Senate votes required to pass legislation from 51 to 60 as a key undoing of this country. I know I will.